New Delhi: A Delhi court today (Dec 18, 2004) dismissed the bail plea of Baazee.com CEO Avnish Bajaj arrested in connection with the DPS MMS scandal case and remanded him to judicial custody till December 24.

Bajaj's application was dismissed by Metropolitan Magistrate Nivedita Anil Sharma, who said the investigation was still incomplete and that the offences alleged against him did not warrant grant of bail.

Delhi Police, which arrested Bajaj, had sought judicial custody of the former IITian.

Surprisingly, Additional Public Prosecutor Inder Kumar initially told the court that the police had no objection to the accused being released on bail.

This was backed in the court by the investigating officer S D Mishra too. But later another Additional Public Prosecutor Pankaj Bhatia came and told the court that they had only conceded that the accused had been called for interrogation prior to his arrest.

The submission was heard by the court, which recorded that Kumar and Mishra had initially conceded to the grant of bail, and that Bhatia later informed it that they were conceding only to the extent that the accused was called for interrogation prior to his arrest.

On the points that the IT Act exempted the network service provider from any liability provided that the alleged offence was committed without his or her knowledge or that the service provider had exercised due diligence to prevent the commission of such offence, the court said this had to be proved by way of leading evidence at the stage of trial.

Bajaj was arrested yesterday under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act (transmission of obscene material through electronic media).

He had been summoned by Delhi Police from the US and was arrested after it was allegedly established that the website had sold eight CDs of the lewd MMS.